In free-agent frenzy, patience is a valuable virtue

BOSTON ó Your local mall isnít the only place where shopping is about to get out of control.

BOSTON ó Your local mall isnít the only place where shopping is about to get out of control.

Baseballís annual winter meetings typically kick off a spending frenzy on available free agents, a series of high-priced auctions for the services of the best players on the open market. The more players come off the market, the more general managers will be tempted to jump in lest they miss out, driving the prices up further.

Thatís what makes this the perfect time to sit tight and wait. During the baseball offseason, caveat emptor never applies more than it does in the first two weeks of December.

Pressure on Ben Cherington to make a big move seems to be building, especially with the bad taste of a 93-loss still lingering. He has the $250 million he saved by trading Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez still burning a hole in his pocket. He has a fan base clamoring for a big splash.

Still, Cherington and the Red Sox should know as well as anyone the value of waiting out the market. Unless a team has a particular player targeted and can lock him up before bidding gets out of control, the best values tend to be found once the market settles down, after New Yearís Day.

Adrian Beltre might have been the best free-agent signing Boston has made in the last five years. He slugged .553 in 2010 and played a brilliant defensive third base, all for the price of a one-year, $10-million contract. The Red Sox signed him in the first week of January.

More recently, Cody Ross hit 22 home runs and was one of the best players on an otherwise forgettable Boston team a year ago. Ross signed for a commitment of $3 million for one season. He signed his contract in the last week of January.

Perhaps the best value signing by any team last offseason was Tampa Bay landing Jeff Keppinger, a do-it-all infielder who hit .325 with a .367 on-base percentage for the bargain-basement price of $1.53 million. He signed his contract five days after Ross did.

In terms of bang for the buck, perhaps the best free-agent signing of any team in recent years was Aubrey Huff, who hit 26 home runs and posted a .385 on-base percentage for the San Francisco Giants in 2010. He signed his one-year, $3-million contract in the middle of January.

On the flip side, most of the biggest free-agent busts in recent years have tended to sign their contracts in early December ó often in the frenzy that is the winter meetings. Heath Bell, Carl Crawford, Adam Dunn, Chone Figgins, Jose Guillen and Francisco Rodriguez are a few examples.

Logically, it makes sense. As the offseason gets under way, most players have a dozen or more potential landing spots available to them ó and the players with the best track records can sit back and let the bidders come to them. As the offseason progresses, however, more teams blow through the money they have in their budgets, and the number of potential bidders for each player begins to dry up. The remaining teams who were willing to be patient can be rewarded with terrific value.

Itís not just anecdotal or logical, however. The numbers bear it out. In the last five offseasons, based on numbers culled from MLBTradeRumors.com and Fangraphs.comís comprehensive Wins Above Replacement metric, free agents signed in January not only have been a better value but have been more productive.

Almost 400 players have signed close to 550 free-agent contracts since the end of the 2007 season. In that span, the average free agent signed before Jan. 1 has been worth an average of 0.86 WAR per season over the life of his contract. The average free agent signed after Jan. 1 has been worth an average of 0.92 WAR per season over the life of the contract.

What about the price? Before Jan. 1, teams have paid an average of $5.52 million to obtain 1 WARís worth of production from the free agents theyíve signed. (For context, thatís a little more than what the Red Sox will pay Jonny Gomes next season.) After Jan. 1, teams have paid an average of $3.60 million per 1 WAR of production theyíve received.

In other words, a team with $30 million to spend on the free-agent market could expect to get 5.4 WAR if it emptied its piggy bank before the end of December. If it waited until January, it could expect to get 8.3 WAR for the same $30 million.

Itís not hard to see how that approach could benefit the pitching-needy Red Sox this offseason. The free-agent market has just one elite starter (Zack Greinke) and a parade of starters with question marks who all probably should be expected to contribute similar production next season.

If Cherington believes Dan Haren or Edwin Jackson or Brandon McCarthy or Shaun Marcum is head and shoulders above the rest, maybe it makes sense to bid heavily for him.

But itís hard to see any of those pitchers as being head and shoulders above any of the others. In that case, it might behoove Cherington to sit out the auctions that are about to happen and swoop in once the dust settles.

Maybe Haren, Jackson, Marcum and Anibal Sanchez all sign lucrative contracts with pitching-needy teams before the end of December. That still would leave McCarthy and Kyle Lohse on the market, among others, with most of the other potential bidders having spent most of their available money.

Thatís the way it has worked just about every offseason. Thereís always someone who gets lost in the shuffle. Beltre was lost in the shuffle three years ago. Ross was lost in the shuffle last year. Both turned out to be terrific bargains.

And a slugging first baseman whoíd been let go by the Minnesota Twins was lost in the shuffle before the 2003 season. He didnít sign a contract until the end of January, just a few weeks before spring training. He was paid just $1.25 million.

David Ortiz turned out to be the best free-agent signing the Red Sox ever made.